French police have been reported to their country’s human rights watchdog after using a knife to deflate a small boat packed with migrants bound for England.
Dramatic scenes filmed at Oye-Plage, a beach near Calais, on Sunday morning show an officer slashing at an inflatable before it collapses.
About 25 young men wearing bright orange life jackets are then forced off the craft and retreat back onto the beach.
Officers who sprinted up to the dinghy are seen wading into shin-depth water but it is unclear from the video whether it was actually afloat.
A spokesman for the Pas-de-Calais gendarmerie said the vessel was actually grounded at the time.
But a spokesman for migrant charity Utopia 56 claimed it was illegal to deflate the dinghy while it was already in the water and put lives in danger.
He said: ‘This video was filmed by one of our volunteers on Sunday morning in Oye-Plage, near Calais.
Video released by migrant charity Utopia 56 shows French police sprinting towards a migrant dinghy at Oye-Plage, near Calais, on Sunday morning and deflating it
‘It shows police officers slashing a boat already in the water, while people are on board.
‘This is an extremely dangerous practice for passengers, yet it has been used regularly for several years, as evidenced by the people we meet along the coast.’
Gendarmes have been filmed slashing inflatables on a number of occasions, including at a beach near Boulogne in July last year.
But the latest incident comes amid a shift in tactics by French police in the wake of a new, £660million three-year deal for beach patrols to be funded by the British taxpayer.
Later in the sequence, about 25 migrants disembark the deflating vessel and return to the beach
After years of lobbying by successive UK governments the French have begun intercepting traffickers’ ‘taxi boats’ while they are already in the water.
They were pictured stopping an inflatable in the Aa canal at Gravelines, near Calais, with six people aboard in January.
It was confirmed last month that the French authorities’ new initiative to stop boats at sea will only apply to dinghies with fewer than 20 migrants aboard.
The limit has been imposed amid French concerns that intercepting more crowded vessels could lead to loss of life.
Utopia 56 has filed a report to France’s Defender of Rights – the country’s principal human rights watchdog – about Sunday’s incident.
A complaint has also been made to the organisation that investigates complaints against the police, the IGGN National Gendarmerie Inspectorate.
A volunteer working for Utopia 56 filmed the video and said it would be used as evidence against the police.
It will now be up to investigators to decide whether the boat was on the water at the time the knife was stuck in its side.
In turn, a spokesman for the Pas-de-Calais gendarmerie said the intervention was ‘entirely within the law’ because it did not take place in the English Channel.
He said: ‘It wasn't a boat in the water – it was a boat that had run aground and suffered a flotation failure.’
The spokesman added: ‘Officers neutralised the boat to prevent it from returning to sea and thus avoid further endangering the migrants' lives during the crossing.’
Nobody was hurt during the knifing of the boat and there were no arrests.
The police intervention happened on the day two UK-bound migrants including a child were found dead inside another overcrowded small boat.
Emergency service workers made the horrifying discovery in the early hours of Sunday on a beach close to Neufchatel-Hardelot, south of Boulogne.
There were fears that the deceased – who were females aged 16 and 29 – had been crushed to death.
The inflatable boat’s engine exploded, forcing those on board to huddle together as they pulled away from a raging fire at around 3am.
Four people also died last month while attempting to board an inflatable dinghy in nearby Equihen-Plage.
All had waded into the sea in a bid to reach a taxi boat positioned offshore.
Two others died in similar circumstances a few days previously, as the French authorities reported an increase in numbers trying to get across the Channel because of improved weather.
All had paid people smugglers for a place on an overcrowded boat on one of the most dangerous migrant routes in the world.
More than 7,300 migrants have successfully crossed the Channel this year, and the total since the crisis began in 2018 is poised to tip over 200,000.